The Iron Coin Summary

"Nightmare" is about an ancient king from the north who doesn't look at the poet but judges him in his dreams. "Mexico" lists several things that are alike, different, and eternal, ending with the man on his deathbed who awaits the end and wants all of it. "To Manuel Mujica Lainez," addressed to the Argentine novelist, suggests that both Borges and Lainez once embraced a fatherland that they have misplaced. "Herman Melville" attests that the sea was always Melville's and he possessed it on that other ocean, which is writing. Borges calls the story of the Pequod's captain (Moby Dick) the great book, the blue Proteus. "The Moon" is not the moon Adam saw, the poem declares, because she is filled with the ancient lament of human vigils, and is your mirror. In "To Johannes Brahms," the poet admits...